Getting to the bottom of the cycling animosity

I've never ridden my bicycle naked. Personally, I find clothes to be preferable when commuting to work <em>en velo</em>. If for no other reason, they save your skin if you take a tumble.<br><br> But I tip my hat (or helmet, as the case may be) to those brave men and women who took part or will take part in this year's <a href="http://wiki.worldnakedbikeride.org/wiki/Australia">World Naked Bike Ride</a>.

I've never ridden my bicycle naked. Personally, I find clothes to be preferable when commuting to work en velo. If for no other reason, they save your skin if you take a tumble.

But I tip my hat (or helmet, as the case may be) to those brave men and women who took part or will take part in this year's World Naked Bike Ride.

It is a shameless publicity stunt to raise awareness of the environmental and health benefits of cycling, and the need for better infrastructure to encourage it. Put naked people on the streets and you are guaranteed to garner media attention. Just ask Spencer Tunick.

But behind the cheeky grab (ooh what a terrible pun!) for headlines is a serious message. Cyclists are very vulnerable on our roads. Most motorists will have a bingle with another car at some point in their driving career, which usually results in a trip to the panel beaters and some insurance paperwork. A very minor collision between motorist and cyclist, however, can result in a trip to hospital.

With no protective fenders and bumpers, cyclists are almost literally naked - hence the logic behind advertising the cyclist message while nude.

Garry Brennan, spokesman for Bicycle Victoria (who are not affiliated with the nudists) says that around seven riders each year are killed on Victoria's roads.

"As rider numbers increase the number of crashes have also been increasing but at a much lower rate," he says.

Also this week, a visiting American bicycle infrastructure researcher pronounced Sydney to be the world's most hostile city to cyclists.

John Pucher and colleagues compared Australia's two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne and confirmed what everyone had long suspected: Melburnians are twice as likely to ride to work and are much safer than their Sydney friends.

"The bottom line is that bicycling infrastructure provision, programs and related policies have contributed to the faster and higher growing cycling rates in Melbourne," he said (And he made that bottom line pun completely independently of me).

Sydney also has some lung-busting hills - particularly on the north shore. And then there's the Harbour - great for photos, less good for allowing a short and direct route to work.

So it's not an ideal city to get pedalling. However the attitude of drivers towards cyclists is the point of difference the visiting academic remarked upon in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

''Whether I was a pedestrian or cyclist I found the level of the hostility of enough Sydney motorists worse than I had seen anywhere in the world,'' Pucher said.

He has a paper on the topic coming out soon in the Journal of Transport Geography.

Even the Lord Mayor herself is not immune from abuse at the hands of Sydney motorists. At a recent ribbon cutting ceremony at a new bicycle lane, Ms Moore was heckled and proceedings interrupted by a group of local business people annoyed that their parking spots had been subsumed by the new bicycle lane.

Cyclists, whether in Sydney or Melbourne, are in the minority. They make up just over one percent of all trips to work. But cyclists, like trucks, taxis, trams, pedestrians and ordinary cars are legitimate road-users. Accordingly, they are required to obey the road-rules but they are also allowed a few extra rules, like being able to ride two abreast in a single lane (that wasn't pun, by the way).

But for some reason, it seems that motorists consider bicycles to be their nemeses out there in traffic. And vice versa. A horrible incident in 2008 in which a motorist allegedly deliberately caused a training bunch to crash by braking hard in front of them unleashed a stream of vitriol on both sides of the debate on Internet forums and talk-back radio.

Brennan's hypothesis on the animosity is that it stems from aversion to change, "These are people that don't like change of any kind. Their comfortable, familiar world has suddenly changed. They are struggling to understand what it means. But it's a temporary transition."

He likens those who hate cyclists to those who opposed mini-skirts in the 1960s. "Societal change is threatening to people."

He also believes that as new cyclists join the growing numbers of commuters, the siege mentality of the old-school riders will be diluted and a new kind of co-operation will emerge. "The culture of riding is changing," he says.

Gemmy :

16 Mar 2010 10:21:32am

The reason I get annoyed by cyclists (and this is not all of them) is because they do stupid things in front of traffic and them blame the driver when they are nearly killed. Not all of them are bad, but there are some who are so arrogant and abusive. Blokes mostly.

Michael :

Secondly, motorists sit in a metal cage in which they're largely shielded from both from physical injury and from verbal abuse, of which there is plenty.

Yes there are stupid, selfish cyclists - we're human too, just try stopping next time you see a cyclist lying in pain on the road because somebody has opened their car door in front of them. And you have to admit that foolish cyclists are far outweighed (in every sense) by foolish motorists.

Most cyclists are motorists at some point, so we can see it from the car/truck's point of view. Most motorists, however, have never tried to negotiate morning traffic down Elizabeth St on a bike, dodging cars, lorries, pedestrians and car doors.

Oh, and then there are the ones who deliberately try to run you off the road or scream at you as they drive past. It happens a lot more often than you might think.

We could all learn to better share the road. That said, cars are far, far more dangerous than bicycles. Riding my bike, I represent one less car and a safer city.

Peonyrose :

03 Jun 2010 9:20:54pm

I just got hit by a cyclist today who zoomed past in a hurry next to the gutter on the side of the road; all the cars were stationary. My neck and back got a lash and I'm furious! He just rode past and didn't even stop! It's impossible to watch out for a cyclist a opposed to a car that has lights on in the dark! Another time I was almost run over by a cyclist running a red light. As far as I'm concerned, cyclists should be fined double for breaking road rules so that they think twice about breaking road rules and cause themselves and others less injury. I

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About the Editor

Sara Phillips

Sara Phillips has been an environment journalist and editor for eleven years. Learning the trade on environmental trade publications, she went on to be deputy editor of 'Cosmos' magazine and editor of 'G', a green lifestyle magazine. She has won several awards for her work including the 2006 Reuters/IUCN award for excellence in environmental reporting and the 2008 Bell Award for editor of the year.

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